


in having new eyes

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV), Oregon Trail (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Cooking, Crossover, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Marriage of Convenience, Relationship Advice, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28069476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: The sky wasn't as blue as his eyes and she couldn't ever imagine telling him so.
Relationships: Emma Green & Mary Phinney, Emma Green/Henry Hopkins, Jedediah "Jed" Foster/Mary Phinney
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12
Collections: Mercy Street Crossover Advent Silver and AU





	in having new eyes

“Good morning, Mrs. Hopkins, perhaps I could lend a hand?” Mrs. Foster said cheerfully, as if the sun were shining brightly and the night’s stars had retreated. Emma poked at the fire she was meant to start beneath the spider, her hair already falling down around her face. Mrs. Foster was not a fashion-plate by any means, but her chestnut hair was neatly braided back and her sprigged calico looked fresh, the muslin apron covering her skirts unstained. Emma felt a slovenly mess, from her unbuttoned collar to the dusty tips of her boots, ashamed of the way she looked and how she’d turned her nose up at the Yankee woman when they’d first met.

“I remember being a new bride,” Mrs. Foster went on. “Every task I’d thought would be so easy when I lived with my mother seemed impossible when I was the only one to manage it. The arguments I had with my cookstove were truly fearsome! And yet, when I think of what it must be like to keep house for the first time on the trail, I realize how simple it was for me.”

Emma did not say she had never expected to be the only one to manage a household, that she’d been brought up to expect servants to do the truly difficult work while Emma ordered menus and kept the household accounts and did fine sewing. Now she must lay fires and sweep ashes, scour the few pots and pans with sand if she had it, brush if she didn’t, who’d be beating her own underthings against a rock in river if she were lucky. She’d broken every nail and had a small burn across the base of her thumb and she’d still not been able to produce a biscuit or corncake. They’d eaten hardtack and dried beef for a week.

“There’s a trick to it, you see,” Mrs. Foster, who’d introduced herself as Mary a month ago, which was another lifetime now. The older woman had stepped over and done something with a graceful economy Emma knew she’d never be able to match and now the fire was burning merrily and the mess of cornmeal and flour she’d had in the spider now had the appearance and fragrance of a properly made batter. Breakfast might be actually appetizing, which would be a blessing, except that he’d look at her and grin and she’d know it was Mary Foster’s handiwork, not her own.

“Thank you,” Emma said, knowing she should say something more effusive. Mary Foster didn’t appear to mind. She smiled, a very sweet smile that was reflected in her dark eyes. “I seem to be making a muddle of everything I try,” Emma added, substituting _making a muddle_ for _a complete and utter failure_.

“It’s been very difficult, I think,” Mary said with a kindness that was underlaid with something else, an understand of what it was like to lose everything you’d ever had. 

Only a month ago, she’d been Emma Dorothea Green, the elder daughter of James and Jane Green of Virginia, a pampered spoilt miss whose greatest trouble was the competition posed by her coquettish blonde younger sister and her older brother’s taste for the gaming tables. And now, now they were all gone, swept away crossing the usually placid Kansas River—Emma had only survived because Henry Hopkins, whom her brother had called _that dull old stone-face_ had grabbed her around the waist with one hand as she’d slipped from the wagon and started to be caught by the current.

She thought she’d only owe him her life. And then he’d asked to marry her. 

There’d been another offer, from red-faced Silas Bullen who’d actually licked his lips and stroked his horrid whiskers when he made what he called “a fair enough proposal to a gal as has nothin’ in pertickerler to recommend her but what we all can surely see” and then smirked as if he’d seen her in only her chemise and Emma had felt she must accept Mr. Hopkins because without a Mrs. there was no one who could truly keep her safe from Bullen, even though Jed Foster had stepped forward after his wife jostled him and said she might travel with them if she would. 

She’d married Henry Hopkins a week ago, without a wedding dress or a mourning bonnet. With the dress on her back and the one small trunk filled with sewing notions they’d fished out of the river to her name; the ring he gave her was his mother’s, slightly too large. It was a little loose on her finger-- not enough to slip off, just enough to be aware of it sitting there. He was very tall, very solemn, and more respectful of his wife than he’d been of unmarried Emma; he hadn’t touched her once since the brief kiss at the brief ceremony. She slept alone, terribly, in the wagon and made him terrible meals he choked down without a frown and needed to be told how to do everything and wept when she thought no one was watching. Mrs. Brannan had given her a sunbonnet to wear and its enormous brim gave her a sense of some privacy, though her husband had glanced at her on the wagon’s seat and pressed a plain handkerchief into her trembling hand. 

“The stories they tell us about love and marriage, they’re not true,” Mary Foster said, taking the corncake off the spider and filling another pan with green coffee beans to roast. “Or rather, they only tell us one story.”

“I beg your pardon,” Emma said, trying to attend to what Mary was doing. Trying to learn properly how to be a good wife. She filled the coffee-pot with water from a jug, she knew to do that at least.

“If I’m not being too forward, I think perhaps you worry about being Mrs. Hopkins. How it came to be so,” she said, with an admirable degree of care in her reference to an undeniable marriage of convenience—for Emma. For Henry, inconvenience could be the only word that applied. Emma nodded, trusting that would be enough.

“I was married before. We were happy, we had a quiet life and then, my husband died. A cancer. He suffered so and I knew I must let him go. I did not think to marry again, to leave my family,” Mary said.

“What happened?” Emma asked.

“I met Jedediah,” she said simply.

“Love at first sight?” Emma said. “Like a fairy tale.”

“Heavens, no! How he’d howl to hear you say that! We fought as if we were the bitterest enemies—until we realized how our…passionate convictions united us,” Mary said. “And now we are making a new life together, in a new world. As you and Mr. Hopkins are.”

“I don’t know,” Emma said, finding the desire within herself to confide in Mary, to seek her counsel and ask how she might discover if she loved her husband. If he could ever truly love her. But as she opened her mouth to speak, she saw Henry walking towards them, his sleeves rolled up and his arms full of freshly split firewood.

“Something smells awfully good,” he said, addressing Emma though it was clear Mary was closer to the food and the now-steaming coffee-pot. “Hope you’ll join us, Mrs. Foster.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. I must get Mr. Foster his breakfast or we’ll all have to suffer his bad temper. He’s like a bear with a sore head if he doesn’t get some biscuit and coffee first thing,” Mary said. Lied, really, as Emma had seen Jedediah Foster walk about the camp whistling after Mary had scolded him lightly to go and fetch her water or wood, only his wife’s kiss breaking his fast.

“Perhaps this evening, you might come by and sit a spell,” Emma said. 

“Only if you let me bring over a dried apple pie. I’ve been meaning to make one but they don’t keep—I hate to see it go to waste,” Mary said.

“That sounds mighty pleasant,” Emma said. “If Mr. Foster doesn’t mind.”

“He won’t if he knows what’s good for him,” Mary said. Emma smiled but Henry laughed, a warm golden sound like the full sunrise. Maybe she wouldn’t need Mary Foster’s advice after all. Except about how to make the pie.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Proust.


End file.
